Very odd list. I tend to read works by female fantasy authors and the only names I recognized were Jacqueline Carey, Juliet Marillier, and Martha Wells, but I've only read Martha Wells' Fall of Ile-Rien series. Carey's "Kushiel's Dart" has been sitting in my TBR bookcase for years and years now.

I think this may be "10 books we get a bonus for recommending*," because I can't see anything on the list that singles those out above award-winning and other excellent fantasy novels. I'm sure they're all excellent novels, but I've read none of them and only recognize two by name.

If we're looking at popularity and widespread impact, Rowling is missing.

I suppose McCaffrey and L'Engle both maybe count as "science fiction."

* Maybe that's too cynical, and it's just "10 books we think you can still find in print form." Or "10 books published by agency publishers." (I didn't check.) Or possibly it's "this author honestly thinks these are the 10 best fantasy novels ever written by women," but that would be almost too pathetic to contemplate.

I note that the Title of the article says, "Top 10 Fantasy Novels by Female Authors (list inspired by 'The Killing Moon') "

WTF does that mean.

I can understand "10 great fantasy novels by female authors, which if you like The Killing Moon, you would probably enjoy." And of course, that's too long for a post title. But they could come a lot closer to it than "Top 10 [by which we mean the 10 that first sprang to mind after reading TKM]."

I haven't read a single one of those and haven't even heard of most of the authors. How can you have a list of top fantasy novels without including anything by top earlier female authors. First you have the originals - Andre Norton, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Anne McCaffery [note - most of these put a SF facade over their fantasy (Dragon Riders of Pern series, Darkover series)]. Then you had the writers from the 60's and 70's - Katherine Kultz (Deryni series), Le Guin (Earthsea) and many others. Then the writers from the 70's and 80's (Moon, Mercedes Lackey, Emma Bull's classic War of the Oaks). Then we have J.K. Rowling. You also have youth authors such as Tamora Pierce, modern fantasy authors such as Patricia Briggs and Patricia Bray. I know I'm leaving off a ton of them.

Laine, if the problem is your ip address them you can get round it with a vpn. If it is the cc address then book tokens might help. Failing that, maybe a penpal who will swap books with you (you buy one and send it, they do the same for you)

Robin Hobb is the only really glaring omission, to me. You could argue that many of the others belong in different categories (SF, Urban Fantasy, Horror, whatever).

And Xanthe, good luck getting all of those into your Top 10.

The problem is, I think, that in order to be considered legitimate "fantasy" in "official" lists like this, the characters usually have to wear homespun clothing, they have to be either a orphan/kidnapped at birth/a courtesan/thief, there has to be a swordfight, some kingdom is always threatening another kingdom, and there's always a mage involved. In fact, the closer to Tolkein the story seems to be, the better.

To me, urban fantasy is legitimate "fantasy" too. And all of the authors I mentioned have written fantasy even if they also write in other genres.

I wonder if it's easier for a male author to get an ongoing fantasy book deal than a female author? Because a lot more female authors seem to branch out into other genres after having managed to sell only a couple of their fantasy books, which is why they might be better known in other genres. And if you read the acknowledgements of books, you often see that a fantasy book being released now by an established female author was actually written years ago but no publisher would buy it then.

I've never read anything by Robin Hobb; I ran across her Rant Against Fanfic before I'd seen any of her books, and it convinced me that, whatever worlds she might have made, they weren't supposed to be interesting enough that I wanted to play in them. So I don't bother.

I'm not exactly opposed to reading her books, but there's always been something else higher on the TBR list than a fantasy series where the author gets offended if people enjoy making their own what-if stories about it.